


An Offering, Taken

by BlondePomeranian



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Loss, Suicidal Thoughts, sfw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-18
Updated: 2018-06-18
Packaged: 2019-05-24 20:12:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14961392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlondePomeranian/pseuds/BlondePomeranian
Summary: (A Solavellan-based character sketch.) Esperanza, servant of Mythal, First of clan Lavellan, always wore her hair in a fiery braid of thirty-two arrowheads. It was a badge of honor, she said. A show of indomitability and a dedication to a singular focus. Funny, then, that he should remark on the same thing.





	An Offering, Taken

Esperanza, servant of Mythal, First of clan Lavellan, always wore her hair in a fiery braid of thirty-two arrowheads. Though it wove down to the small of her back and so caught on everything and brought with it twigs and leaves and other debris, it was a known rule that no one but she could touch it.

It was a badge of honor, she said. A show of indomitability and a dedication to a singular focus.

Funny, then, that he should remark on the same thing.

 

When Haven burns, so does she. She is alight with spite and determination, but it is not enough to melt the snow that reaches her knees nor the ice that clings to her like sweat. It is just enough to keep her alive.

She wakes to a fire before her and voices around her—voices of the living, this time. Her braid has not been touched.

After the people rekindle their spirits, he pulls her aside, away from the group to a fire all his own. As he talks—telling her of the elven orb and all the consequences of being an elf, as if she didn’t already know—she undoes her braid and reweaves it, counting thirty-three notches.

 

It is when they have found a home in Skyhold that he breaks the rule for the first time.

Lucky for him she does not make mention of it. If Fade-tongue does not count, then Fade-braid probably follows suit.

But a rule once broken oft begets a habit soon formed, and it is one that he relishes in the creating of. With a gentle touch, he picks out a twig from between the notches while they break in the Hinterlands, and she gives him a look that is not a chastise. Later, he brings her to pause and takes the end in his hands, summoning a small stream of water to wash out the mud that had smothered its fiery shine. He looks her in the eye as he does this, neither asking permission nor forgiveness. She gives neither but the look of a queen upon her throne who does not reject his offering.

Yet on the balcony to her quarters, he takes her greedily in his arms and one hand pulls her closer, deeper into the kiss, while the other clutches and entwines itself between the braid’s arrowheads. They cut his fingers and he bleeds into her hair, and she and it are made more bold by his blood.

For a man who keeps his own head bare, he cannot seem to get enough of her hair between his fingers when it is just them alone. When she makes note of this, he is quick to write it off with banal reasons, but it does not escape her notice that he shaves his off with the same care and diligence with which she tends to her own.

 

It is not long after that that she receives a letter that drives her to the war table, thirty-four arrowheads flying behind her. When she hunches over the table, they whip around her and spill onto the map. She is breathless and she is desperate. She pounds her fist and barks out orders that are heeded. All, but one. It is when she storms from the room headed to arm herself and mount that a firm hand grabs her shoulder. She whirls out of Cassandra’s grasp, armed to the teeth enough with her words, but Cassandra shakes her head. Steel meets steel in their eyes.

It is a clang he can hear through the stone walls, and he enters just as Lavellan brushes by him, head held high. Thirty-four arrowheads trail behind her, the veil that she has worn since she bound herself to _Lavellan_.

But she does not make it to her altar before the report tied to the leg of a crow finds her already leagues away from Skyhold.

And when she is found next, it is in the broken screams that fall from the highest tower of Skyhold, where he is there to quell the storm. When she runs out of wind and the thunder of her anguish crumples into sobs, he is there, holding her, stroking her hair, to help her pick up the pieces what remains.

 

She now counts to thirty-five when she braids her hair. At the Temple of Mythal, they do not find protection, only vulnerability and the ruin it brings. She wipes a quiet tear from the golden branches under her eyes and steps into the Well of Sorrows, heedless of all warnings behind her. She sees her own reflection and as she kneels, her braid breaks the water’s surface next to her hands. It is a root of gold that soaks in the water. She cups her hands and drinks what remains.

 

She has not seen him this incensed since the death of his friend.

His words are heavy and full of something she cannot identify. His questions bruise her but they are not things she has not considered. Her answers soften his expression yet steel the resolve she sees in him. To what end it seeks, she does not know, but she feels that same fire in her blood as in his voice as he urges her with him. Perhaps together, they can restore a better future from still yet what remains.

 

Then.

_Ar lasa mala revas. You are free._

The thirty-five notches in her braid hang like a rope from her neck.

 

They saw the Inquisitor leave with him that evening, but he returns later the next day, and she is not with him.

Another night passes, and in the morning, someone different rides in on the Inquisitor’s mount.

When she returns, it is without her clan, it is without Mythal and her vallaslin, and it is with hair shorn close at the nape of the neck. She is left only with the hope for which she was named, and even that is fading fast. It is seeping into the anchor where it is twisted and wrenched into what it should never become.

But whatever it shall become, it will take its time, and then it will take what is left of her—whatever remains.


End file.
